Saturday is a busy night for music both within Birmingham and beyond. Much interest centres on Symphony Hall, where we are invited to share "An Intimate Evening with Lesley Garrett and Friends".

The "nation's favourite soprano" is joined by a small ensemble and pianist/ music director Tolga Kashif for a programme of music from the worlds of opera, films, musicals and recent songs from her CDs (7.30pm).

Vocal music of a somewhat different nature is presented at St Philip's Cathedral, Colmore Row at the same time, when the Birmingham Choral Union under its popular conductor Colin Baines performs an attractive sweet-and-sour menu consisting of Gounod's St Cecilia Mass and Poulenc's Gloria (details on 0121 360 7793).

And still more singing can be enjoyed at the Adrian Boult Hall in a programme from the Junior Conservatoire Vocal Department, featuring the winners of the Frank Richards Memorial Prize for Singers (7.30pm, details on 0121 303 2323).

Student musicians from the other end of the age range - Birmingham Conservatoire graduates participating in this month's New Generation Arts Festival - meanwhile perform at the CBSO Centre in Berkley Street, offering a programme of 20th-century music by Gorecki, Shostakovich, Takemitsu, Copland, Zivkovic and Siegel (7.30pm, 0121 303 2323).

Moving out of Birmingham, Stourbridge Town Hall is the venue for the latest concert in the enterprising series of promotions by the Halesowen Orchestra, under its tireless conductor Martin Leigh.

The concert's main work is Tchaikovsky's passionate Fifth Symphony, but the programme also contains another jewel of a piece in Mozart's elegant yet pithy Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola K364. Quan Wu and Matthew Kettle are the soloists, and readers may remember it's not so long ago that Cradley Heath-based Matthew was principal viola in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (7.30pm, 0121 550 0956).

And progressing to the fringe of the region, the Nimbus Concert Hall at Wyastone Leys near Monmouth hosts Jeremy Menuhin, directing the English Symphony Orchestra from the keyboard in piano concertos by Bach and Mozart (his poignant final work in the medium, K 595 in B-flat major).

The programme also includes one of Mozart's last symphonies, the turbulent no.40 in G minor, K550 (7.45pm, details on 01600 891090).

Another beautiful venue in the Midlands countryside is Longborough Festival Opera near Moretonin-Marsh, where tomorrow evening sees the premiere of a new production of Verdi's powerful and lurid Rigoletto. Jonathan Lyness conducts, with Richard Studer directing and designing (6.30pm, 01451 830292).

Also tomorrow, back at headquarters in Symphony Hall, Wayne Marshall and David Briggs (ex-Gloucester Cathedral organist and choirmaster) tussle it out in a "Battle of the Organs" (7.30pm, 0121 780 3333).

The programme is an intriguing one, pairing two composers who were contemporaries but whose music could not sound more different.

Two exquisite orchestral miniatures by Delius (On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring and Summer Night on the River precede Mahler's valedictory, searing Symphony no.9 (7.30pm, details on 0121 303 2323).

Finally, a tale of two birthdays. Richard Leigh Harris, tutor in composition and keyboard at Birmingham Conservatoire, and an occasional reviewer for this newspaper, celebrated his 50th birthday earlier this year, and the event is marked with a lunchtime recital at the Conservatoire on Tuesday.

Works by Leigh Harris himself will naturally feature, as well as pieces by Howard Skempton and Graham Fitkin, and one by Mark-Anthony Turnage written in memory of the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu (1pm, 0121 303 2323).

And on Wednesday Symphony Hall hosts a very special birthday offering, marking the concert season in which one of Birmingham's most popular visitors, and one of the world's most respected musicians, Sir Charles Mackerras, has celebrated his 80th birthday.

Between these two comes Mozart's B-flat Piano Concerto K595, the equally eminent Alfred Brendel (himself an honorary Knight of the realm) the soloist in this heartbreaking farewell by Mozart to a form he had made his own (7.30pm, 0121 780 3333).